anger Archives - Behind the Lens

I have resisted writing this for a long time, but after the events of my game last Friday I am to tired to care anymore. I am a good Game Master! I dont say that to brag, but to point out that I put time and effort into making good stories for my players. I try hard to center the story around their backgrounds, and create challenges that they will enjoy. On average I spend several hours a week working on creating good stories for my players, and for the most part they seem to enjoy them. Last week however I had put in a great deal of time creating a dungeon filled with traps and mysteries. I spent several hours working out the details of the dungeon, and even went out and spent money on some VERY nice dungeon tiles. The night of the game came, and I was super excited! The night did not start out well when half of my players showed up almost an hour late. Once we were all there and settled we started to game. I carefully presented them with the story, and was disappointed that they seemed HELL BENT on doing what they wanted to do despite all the consequences. The players wanted to go talk to this VERY powerful spirit, and had it in their head that this spirit was going to spill the beans on everything going on around them (he wont), and give them direction on where to go next (he might). Reading up on this spirit I found he had a side to him that would make him want to have people prove themselves to him. So a nice dungeon with traps and pitfalls seemed like a fun idea. I was wrong! As i carefully guided them to the dungeon one of my players continually kept challenging me, and pushing me to abandon my story line and just bee line them to this great and powerful spirit. I was patient and held my ground. Even though I was holding my ground she made it clear she was not happy about the direction the story was taking. Once we got into the dungeon she was so beligerent and rude about the whole affair, that I lost track of what the other players were feeling or doing. My attention and anger was so geared toward this friend of mine that I lost sight of the main goal of the adventure.

Instead of being a fun, mysterious, maze of traps and pitfalls it turned into a giant pile of crap. I couldn’t concentrate, and I was having a hard time remembering the maze I had created. Finally this player looked me dead in the face and said “Why are we doing this? This is so…D&Dish (add A LOT of negative tonal inflections on that last part)”. That was it I had had enough. I straight shotted them to the end of the maze, and was so glad to see the night was over and I could go home. I gathered my things and took off before anyone else. I was SO angry at this friend and player that I needed to get the hell out of there before I exploded!

So what do you do when you have a player who HAS to be the center of attention, and constantly makes negative remarks about your story? I find often times that people forget that the game is also about making sure the GM has fun too. Many times players start to think its all about them. This is a mistake. The game should be fun for everyone. So what do you do with such a player?

So right now for some weird reason I am REALLY pissed! I have NO reason to be pissed, in fact I just got home from spending a few hours with friends. We played Magic tonight, and had a great time. When I got home I felt very crowded and the need to scream, in fact I feel that way right now. I think however if I scream it will upset Terra who is sitting right next to me.

Normally I would never post something like this, but I am pretty sure no one in my family actually reads my blog. They are all to “busy” doing other stuff to really give care about what is going on in my life. So I am pretty sure that anything I post here will not be read by anyone in my family.

I am out here separated from my family. Here is the thing that really upsets me about this…They dont seem to care that I am gone. Its not a surprise really. When I was on my mission in CA the ONLY member of my family who write me on a regular basis was my Dad. Everyone else had every excuse under the sun why they could find the time to write me. But guess what when my brother was on his mission he got SO MANY LETTERS he had to throw them out because he didn’t have the room to carry them anymore.

Now once again I am on the west coast separated from family and I am being ignored. On my birthday I got two phone calls from people in my family. Everyone else forgot. The most recent exploit is with my sister. We have asked over and over again for pictures of their family. Last week Terra and I made a light comment on how we wanted to see more pictures on my sisters blog. We received a VERY rude and negative response. this escalated into a fight where my sister, who wasn’t listening, thought I was upset that she hadn’t posted pictures on her blog. She was wrong! Its her blog she can post when she wants. What I was upset about was her rude comments. Her emails, multiple phone calls, and text messages were all geared toward this thought process of her thinking this whole thing was about the pictures. And with each email, phone call or text her comments got more and more rude, which was making me more and more upset, that being what I was upset about in the first place, and not being upset about the pictures.

NOTE: I would like pictures of my family especially since I am so far from home. I get so little vacation at this job and so seeing pictures helps with that separation. However again that was not what my irritation was over. My irritation was over her rude comments.

So now knowing all of this Terra just told me that Jessica sent her a couple emails filled with pictures of Alice her daughter, and my niece. She didn’t send me anything! Nothing, nadda, zippo! How hard is it to add an email address to the To: line? I am so tired of being left out a forgotten by my family! Time after time I am left out, and at this point it really has gone BEYOND hurting my feelings! AT this point I am almost ready to say screw it and just stop calling them, emailing them, ANYTHING! I doubt they would notice. They are SOOOOOOOOOO “busy” with other things in their life that I seem to ALWAYS take a back seat!

I dont really have a good ending or wrap up for this blog post so I am just going to say to all those of you who stuck through and read this little rant to the end, Thank You for giving me the oppertunity to vent. I appreciate it!